Sally Field Enters "ER"

Double Oscar winner Sally Field, 53, is returning to TV, the medium that launched her career. She's signed to guest-star in six episodes of NBC's "ER" next season, playing the estranged mother of Maura Tierney's character, Abby Lockhart. Field, who starred in the campy '60s sitcoms "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun," reinvented herself as a serious film actress and took home Academy Awards for 1979's "Norma Rae" and 1984's "Places in the Heart" (for which she delivered her famous "You like me" acceptance speech). She has since graduated to older -- and smaller -- film roles, such as the mother in 1994's "Forrest Gump." On "ER" her character will have "unresolved conflicts with her daughter," the top-rated show's executive producer, Jack Orman, told Variety. "She can be sympathetic and strong and vulnerable and very, very complex. We know she can pull this off."